MetLife bells toll again

The bells of Madison Square Park’s MetLife Tower are ringing once again as part of a sound sculpture by Bill Fontana. The tower’s bells have been silent since 2001; before then, its chimes rang on the quarter hour with a measure adapted from Handel’s “Messiah.” Fontana was able to get the chimes turned on and recorded them for a piece called “Panoramic Echoes” that is now sounding in the park. The MetLife Tower’s clock is one of the largest four-sided clocks in the world, and its chimes started ringing in 1909, when the building was the tallest in the world. more [New Yorker]